


soldier on, achilles

by pledispristin



Category: Wanna One (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Angst with a Happy Ending, Childhood Friends, Friends to Lovers, Historical Inaccuracy, M/M, The Iliad, Trojan War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 02:53:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15257838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pledispristin/pseuds/pledispristin
Summary: Ambition can be curbed by support; even the most hated warriors can live out happy lives when given their protection. The Fates tied their strings together, knotted them intricately with each other, braided them together so that they could never be parted.





	soldier on, achilles

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i'm back again w another fic~
> 
> apologies as always to anyone who's familiar with the source material of this fic as i have taken many, many liberties with the plot by removing certain plot devices and adding others. the original _iliad_ had no mention of anyone washing up among a tribe of amazons, but it also had some pretty shitty stuff that just doesn't fly in a modern setting. also i'm gay so i do what i want
> 
> but yeah this is a trojan war au, no i don't know what made me want to write this, the basic key players are jihoon - achilles, woojin - patroclus, daniel - meneleus, jinyoung - agamemnon, minhyun - helen, seongwoo - paris, and sungwoon - hector. ft cameos from jisung-as-chiron and also every contestant of produce 101 seasons 1 and 3 as a tribe of amazons. this is super historically and mythologically inaccurate, btw, but once again: i'm gay so i do what i want
> 
> thanks so much to kaya for listening to me talk about this fic and for encouraging me to get it done!! there's no playlist for this one...if you want music just listen to [this album](https://open.spotify.com/album/3As4X2CFDOOtbeXA6iksV0?si=-P3v1pEpRda6B1bIXCZSzA) because tbh that's all that was gonna be on the playlist anyway. title is from achilles come down by gang of youths

[EXCERPT FROM THE ILIAD](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/iliad-book-i-friend-consigned-death)  
_translated by Robert Fitzgerald, 1974_

Sleeping so? Thou hast forgotten me,  
Akhilleus. Never was I uncared for  
in life but am in death. Accord me burial  
in all haste: let me pass the gates of Death.  
Shades that are images of used-up men  
motion me away, will not receive me  
among their hosts beyond the river. I wander  
about the wide gates and the hall of Death.  
Give me your hand. I sorrow.  
When thou shalt have allotted me my fire  
I will not fare here from the dark again.

* * *

When Woojin is born, the sun disappears.

Later, it will be said that he was born on the minute, just as the sun was eclipsed by the moon and darkness spread across the city. The light abandoned the sun, just as the gods abandoned the child, left him sobbing as the light left his mother’s eyes, cold and isolated even in his first minutes.

Things come in cycles. As one life comes into the world, another life reaches its completion. The man leaves life has he enters it; alone. Summer gives way to winter, and winter gives way to summer; night gives way to day, and day gives way to night. 

They name him Woojin—to protect, to help, to guard. Behind the king’s back, they whisper that he’s a cursed child, that he will only ever bring peril and turmoil and bad luck. He’s the third of the four princes of Opus; younger than Youngmin, fated to be a great king like his father, and Donghyun, blessed by Apollo, but older than Daehwi, with abilities no mortal should have.

Woojin was something else; Woojin was a cursed child. His mother, the king’s first wife, had died in childbirth—the sun had disappeared behind the moon as he made his first cries. Where the other three were gifts, Woojin was a punishment; the mangled result of some forgotten dispute, some disrespect felt by the gods.

Thousands of miles away and six months earlier, the lightning struck on a very similar palace as another child was born; a demigod named Jihoon. _Determination, urge, ambition_. 

His mother belongs in the sea, his father belongs in the land. He is half god, half man; half mortal, half indestructible. He’s a child born of conundrum, of opposites, and at the moment of his birth his mother knows that his life will continue as such; almost, but never quite enough. A great warrior, but not great enough to lack flaws; a great man, but not great enough to be infallible. 

Ambition can be curbed by support; even the most hated warriors can live out happy lives when given their protection. The Fates tied their strings together, knotted them intricately with each other, braided them together so that they could never be parted. 

There was Woojin, the prince, and there was Jihoon, the weapon; and then there was Jihoon-and-Woojin, and Woojin-and-Jihoon, and the events that threw them together and cast them realms apart.

 

It starts with the end.

Everything comes in cycles. Woojin’s life had begun with the death of his mother; Woojin’s story began with the death of a friend. 

“I didn’t mean to,” he says later in his father’s throne room, kneeling in front of the throne in penance, his hands bloody and his eyes teary. “I didn’t—it well and truly was an accident. We were—we were only sparring, I didn’t mean for the weapon to truly—”

There’s a deep gash on his arm where the other boy’s sword had cut the skin—it was that incision, that scar, that had led Woojin to panic. He hadn’t even realized what he was doing, had been so desperate to just get the other boy away from him. 

“You killed my son,” says the man he doesn’t know, his brow contorted into thinly veiled dislike. Woojin knows that look all too well—he sees it on his father, every time a servant reports some mistake that Woojin had made, some accident that he couldn’t quite explain. He’s nine years old and he knows what people whisper about him, what they quietly murmur when they think he can’t understand—that he’s cursed, abandoned by the gods, born when the sun disappeared. “Accident or not—my son is dead, boy, do you know what I mean?”

He’s nine years old but he knows death too well, knows death and misfortune and mistakes like the back of his palm. Woojin is bad luck—everyone knows it. Bad things happen around him.

An optimist would say that this is a sign from the gods that his destiny was not in Opus, that he was destined for things bigger and better than the city. A pessimist would say that he would always be bad luck, would always bring carnage wherever he went. 

“Compensation must be made,” says Woojin’s father. He doesn’t look at Woojin; Woojin can barely bring himself to look himself. His father being angry is nothing new, but this isn’t anger—it’s resignation. Like Woojin’s father was used to it, like he didn’t expect anything better from him. 

“Send him away,” says one of his father’s advisors. “To another city. Not full-on exile, but strip him of his royal titles and find someone else willing to take him on—as a servant, or a squire, or something.”

The man scoffs. “As if anyone would take _that_ ,” he says. Woojin winces, tries to hold back a second fall of tears. “That _thing_ is destined for nothing but trouble.”

He says something else, too, a curse word; something Woojin isn’t meant to know the meaning of, but that he’s heard before, whispered through the world. _Devil child._

“Please, father,” he says. “Your majesty.” His face is stricken with tears, their tracks running down his face. “It truly was an accident—I’ll do anything to pay it back, just please don’t send me away.” He sniffles, wiping his eyes with the cloth of his clothing. “Please.”

“Woojin,” says his father, and his voice sounds softer than it normally does. “Look at me.”

Woojin raises his head. “Yes, your majesty?” he asks.

“Stop crying,” says his father, and Woojin knows that he’d misread the tone of his voice. It wasn’t soft betraying weakness, it was soft betraying exhaustion—he didn’t want to deal with Woojin anymore. “Thessaly’s king is was searching for a squire alongside his son. His son is known to be—difficult.” His gaze is cold. “It should be good for you. You will leave the palace tomorrow.”

Woojin bites his lip, drawing blood. _I don’t want to go,_ he thinks—this is his home, as much as he has always hated it, has never felt anything but branded with the mark of an outsider. He’ll miss his brothers—Youngmin, Donghyun, Daehwi. He’ll miss the servants who were kind to him, and the people he sparred with—noble boys, who glare at him when he beats them and whisper behind his back, but they’re his friends.

But he nods. “Yes, your majesty.”

 

When he arrives at Thessaly, the oracle prophesizes that Woojin will be a defining factor in a big war, defending all of their people, that his death will lead to the recovery of their lands. The oracle says that Woojin will be powerful—not as a warrior, not as a leader, but as a rousing cry, as the heart and soul.

Woojin doesn’t feel very powerful. In truth, he feels _scared_ as he introduces himself to the Thessalian court. He’s never seen the sea before, has never been somewhere where the smell of salt is so pungent in the air; all of this is new to him. But this scene, a court of old men silently sizing him up; this is nothing new. If anything, Woojin feels déjà vu looking at it.

“My son,” the king says, “my son Jihoon, he is the son of a goddess. His mother is Thetis, one of the fifty Nereids, and he is gifted with power of someone far beyond his age. Many refuse to treat him as an equal, out of fear or insecurity, but in truth—I think it would do him good to have a squire who looks to him as a friend.” His eyes are boring into Woojin, his gaze hard and fiery. “Would you do that, Woojin of Opus?”

Woojin clears his throat. “Yes—yes sir, I would.” 

The king makes a noise of judgment. “You are here because you accidentally killed someone?”

Woojin shakes his head. “No—I mean, yes, sir—but it was an accident, I swear, and I won’t do it again.”

The king nods. “My son will not be affected by someone like _you_ , anyway.” He turns to one of the maids. “Take him to meet Jihoon, wherever he is.”

Woojin is led out with none of the grace that he’s used to, with none of the silent respect. He’s not a prince anymore, he remembers—he’s just a boy who was sent here as a punishment, an angry child from somewhere in Opus without a penny or a family name to fall back on. 

But then again, the people on Thessaly don’t know about him—they don’t know that he’s bad luck. They don’t expect failure, mistakes; they don’t know that he’s cursed, a _devil child_. This is a punishment, but it’s more than that; it could be the worst thing that ever happened, but it could also be a gift. _To the gods,_ he thinks, willing it desperately. _Please remove my curse. Please let me begin again._

 

Jihoon, as it turns out, is not as different to Woojin as he seems.

He’s different in small ways, sure. Jihoon is a great fighter, born to be a warrior—on the first day they meet, he watches him from afar, sparring with a group of other boys. He’s unscathed when he emerges, grinning like he’d just won something of utmost importance. He’s better-looking than Woojin, too, even at nine years old, glowing with energy that could either be the manifestation of his demigod powers or merely the way he caught the sunlight.

But he knows what it means to be an outcast, to be tolerated. He’s open, talkative, and he takes a liking to Woojin immediately—to his relief, as he’d been afraid when his father said that he was known to be difficult. He learns that his mother had disappeared into the sea once he had been born, that she resurfaced occasionally not to give him affection but to tell him a prophecy, or to remind him of his destiny.

“What destiny?” he asks the first time Jihoon mentions it.

“Apparently, one of the Titans prophesized that whoever Thetis’s son was—he would grow up to be greater than his father,” Jihoon says. “Greater and stronger. My father, before he ascended to the throne—he was a hero and a warrior. He was on the crew of the _Argo_ , when they stole the Golden Fleece, and he was a companion of Heracles.” 

Woojin blinks. He didn’t know anything about that, but he decides not to speak. There were heroes all across their lands, he knew that, but Opus had never had one. The gods didn’t visit Opus; there were none of their demigod children in Woojin’s hometown. And nobody ever told the stories of heroes. What use was it, Woojin’s tutor at home had said when he’d asked once, to tell stories of men who came from faraway lands? That had nothing to do with Opus, and no prince of Opus needed to know it. 

“If I’m to be greater than my father, that means I’ll become a great hero, too,” Jihoon continues. “I’m destined to be strong and—and powerful, and all.” He exhales. “I don’t really know what I’m going to be strong about, though.”

“I think there’ll be a war,” Woojin says quietly. “When I arrived here, the oracle told me that I’ll be important in a big war that could lead to the defeat of all of our people and our lands. Maybe that’s where you’ll become a great hero.”

Jihoon shrugs. “Perhaps.” They’re nine years old, and that’s far too early to be worrying about a war, so when Jihoon grins at him, eyes lighting up with a challenge, Woojin grins back. “I’ll race you across the beach, Woojin, and whoever loses has to—well, I don’t know. Be a loser.”

This is something else that Woojin learns—Jihoon is invincible. He never talks about this, but Woojin notices it—that weapons cannot puncture his skin, and that he never leaves a fight with any wounds on his body. The rumours whispered through the corridors are that, after he was born, his mother took him to the Underworld and dipped him in the River Styx, to make his skin a second armor. There were also rumours that he had a single weak spot, somewhere that the water didn’t touch, and that one day he would be taken down by that weak spot.

If Jihoon heard the rumours, he didn’t seem to be affected by it. He held his head up high, as if to say, _I am the son of Thetis, and I’m not powerful because of any river blessing._ As he walks, he seems to glow in gold, basked in the light of the sun catching on his face; Woojin thinks Jihoon could do anything, even walk on water, if the situation required it.

 

Jihoon is trained by a centaur named Jisung, and it is from Jisung that Woojin begins to learn how to fight, too.

When he follows Jihoon onto the beach, two days after their first meeting, he expects to be told to pick up a sword or a spear and start fighting. That was how his lessons at home had always been.

 _Princes of Opus are natural warriors_ , his tutor back at home had told him. _You should feel affinity to your weapon, Woojin. This is your birthright._

But Jisung only raises an eyebrow and looks him up and down—at his tousled hair and bruised eye from the fight two weeks ago and his carefully maintained chiton. “Are you Jihoon’s new squire?” he asks.

Woojin nods. “My name is Woojin,” he says. “Woojin of Opus.” He lowers his head, expecting in any minute to be told to pick up a weapon and start sparring. He barely knows Jihoon yet, but he’s seen him fight—and Woojin knows he doesn’t stand a chance next to him. Maybe when his father had called Jihoon _difficult_ , he meant that he was far too good a fighter—perhaps the reason he’d searched for a new squire was because he killed the other one.

Jisung glances him over again. “Are you a fighter?”

“I’m supposed to be,” Woojin says, biting his lip again—it’s a nervous habit, he’s discovered. Jisung has a similar hard, judgmental gaze to what he knows, but there’s also softness to it, a kind of wisdom that Woojin thinks he could never achieve. 

“That’s not what I asked, Woojin,” says Jisung. “Are you a fighter?”

“I don’t really know how,” Woojin says lamely. He feels weak just saying it—can’t bring himself to look away from Jisung because he’s too busy imagining what expression Jihoon might have. 

“You’re nervous,” Jisung says. “You’ve spent your entire life up until this point being told that you can’t do it, that you’re bad luck and that you’ll never learn—and you started to believe it, didn’t you?”

Woojin’s jaw drops. “How—how did you know?” he asks.

“I’m an old man,” Jisung says. “Young for a centaur, but in your human years I have lived for a long time. And I’ve trained many young men like you, Woojin. Heracles, Jason, Theseus, Actaeon—even Jihoon’s own father. I know, because I’ve seen it before.” His eye twinkles kindly. “I’ll make you into a man you can be proud of, Woojin.”

“I’m cursed,” Woojin says. “That’s what everyone says. Bad things happen around me.”

“The gods are merciful,” Jisung says. “Curses, my boy, only take effect if you believe them to. Tell me, boy, have you been unlucky in your life because the gods made you that way, or is it because you believe yourself to be? Would all those things truly happen if you were working to your full potential?”

Woojin can’t answer. He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Dwell on that question, Woojin,” says Jisung. “Only when you believe that you can will you be able to be a great warrior. You have the potential to be a hero—you must only believe in it.”

 

For a long time, Woojin doesn’t believe that it’s true.

He’s cursed, he thinks. He doesn’t deserve this. Perhaps this is just a dream, a very vivid dreams—the gods laughing at him, showing him scenes of a world he could never be a part of.

He stays quiet, stays within his shell, tries to take up as little space as he can so it’ll hurt less when his curse finally resurfaces. This was too good to last, wasn’t it? 

The leaves fall off the trees and the cold settles in—autumn becomes winter, and winter becomes spring. Things always come in cycles, even years—days become night and Woojin the disgraced prince becomes Woojin the dear companion.

Woojin begins to feel more comfortable—begins to feel that Jihoon could be his friend, even if he has supernatural immunity and an immortal mother. It doesn’t matter, anyway—Jihoon is faster than him, and stronger, but Woojin starts to be able to keep up, starts to learn how to read his face. When he beats Jihoon, it’s not because he’s stronger; it’s because he’s started to learn Jihoon’s movements, started to be able to predict and deflect what he’ll do.

It’s scary. They’re ten years old by the time the meaning of it settles into Woojin’s bones, the fact that this is the first time anyone has ever made Woojin feel like an equal. He thinks this is what friendship is—not the whispered insults and glares that he’s used to. 

“Woojin is a better defence,” Jisung says once. “Jihoon, you’re constantly trying to attack, you’re constantly going for offence but you’re leaving the rest of you undefended. It’ll be dangerous for you in the future—a shield can only protect so much.”

Woojin smiles apologetically at Jihoon, mouthing _I’m sorry_ as they return to starting positions.

Jihoon frowns. _Why are you sorry?_ he mouths. 

He stops Woojin when they’re done for the day, too. “Why did you say you were sorry?” he asks, knocking him slightly with his shoulder as they make their way up the hill back to the castle. Woojin has begun to learn his way around—the palace is on the top of a rocky hill

Woojin shrugs. “You must’ve been humiliated,” he says. “To be told that you’re—that even _I’m_ better than you.”

Jihoon stops him in his step. “What do you mean?” he asks. “I’m not—I wasn’t humiliated, Woojin. You’re a good fighter—Jisung said to me once, it’s strong to win but it’s truly honorable to learn from your losses.” He sits down on the rocks, patting beside him for Woojin to join him. “I don’t want to go back to the palace, Woojinie. Let’s sit a bit.”

Woojin sits down. It’s nearing sunset now, and he knows they should probably get back, but he can’t find it in him to care. Soft golden light from the disappearing sun shines upon them. He asks, “Why did you never have a squire before me?”

Jihoon shrugs. “My mother was always very particular,” he says. “No matter what my father gave me, if she disapproved she would exit the ocean and tell him that the gods had forbade it. She has a lot of power in this island, and nobody really wants to question it if she says it’s an order from the gods.”

“Are they?” Woojin asks. “Orders from the gods?”

Jihoon shrugs again. “I don’t know,” he admits. “Might just be an order from her.” He gazes off distantly into the ocean. “She left after I was born—said that she could never be tethered to the ground too long. I think my father really did love her—he never married again, you know, even when she left—but I don’t think she did. The gods aren’t like that.”

“Do you think she loves you?” Woojin asks. The conversation has crossed into something dangerously personal, but Jihoon doesn’t seem to notice.

“I think she wants me to be a great hero,” Jihoon says. “My destiny is something—difficult, I suppose. It would not be easy to love your child if you knew they had a destiny to fulfill.” For a second, something vulnerable crosses across his eyes, something painfully youthful—he was practically invincible and the child of a goddess, but he was still a child of ten. “How about you? Why did they send you away?”

Woojin bites his lip. “I killed someone,” he says finally. 

Jihoon nods. “What did he do to deserve it?” he asks casually.

Woojin blinks. “It was an accident,” he says. “We were sparring and—and I panicked so I just—” He mimes a sharp thrust. “I didn’t want to kill him, though.”

Jihoon nods in understanding. “You know, if you did kill someone,” he says, “—on purpose, I mean, if they did something to offend you and you—well, whatever. I would stand by your side.”

Woojin barks out a laugh. “Sure,” he says. 

“You’re _Woojin_ ,” Jihoon says. “You always make good decisions, _and_ you’re my best friend.” He says it simply, like confessing to pure unadulterated trust doesn’t mean anything—they’re ten years old and it doesn’t, yet, mean anything. And yet it’s free of the exaggerations that most ten year olds have in their speech, it’s not a hyperbole thrown out because of lack of understanding; Jihoon does not lie.

Sunset becomes dusk, dusk becomes night. They make their way back up to the palace, laughing as they go; they miss the dinner banquet, too, but it’s okay. Woojin thinks he could have fed off the golden light of the sunset forever, felt himself become energized by it for the rest of his days.

 

The first time Woojin meets Jihoon’s mother, they’re celebrating Jihoon’s thirteenth birthday. There’s no fanfare—Jihoon’s people don’t care too much about birthdays, they set milestones that suit them—but still, it’s an important day.

When he sees a woman come out of the ocean, he ignores it at first. He’s in the middle of sparring with Jihoon, and anyway, he’s used to seeing nymphs appear seemingly from thin air. The gods have smiled upon Thessaly in a way that makes even Woojin, the outsider, feel blessed—supernatural happenings no longer faze him as they did when he first arrived.

It’s only when he makes one good strike, almost knocking Jihoon to the ground, that the woman clears her throat. “Jihoon,” she says in a voice like sandpaper, harsh and rough. “I’m surprised with you—allowing a mere mortal to take a strike at you like that.”

Jihoon lowers his sword. “Mother,” he says. “I didn’t notice you.”

Thetis turns to Woojin, her eyes narrowing. Woojin can’t help but to look away. “Well?” she adds coldly. “Is this the treatment mortals give goddesses these days, or are you just particularly insolent?”

“Oh,” Woojin says, bowing deeply. “I—I apologize, my lady.” 

She tuts judgmentally, turning back to Jihoon. “Who is he, then?” Woojin instantly disliked her, but this cements it—the way she asks Jihoon as if Woojin isn’t right there, as if Woojin isn’t worthy of her words. It makes him feel as if he’s back—well, he’s not sure if he’d call it _home_ , but back in the place he grew up, constantly fighting for respect, trying to get people to forget about his stupid curse and the stupid omens. 

“My friend,” Jihoon says. Woojin knows Jihoon well enough now to hear his gritted teeth as he speaks. “It doesn’t matter. Mother, you must have come up to land for something, mustn’t you?”

“Yes,” Thetis says, tight-lipped. She beckons for Jihoon to follow her, and Woojin watches as they walk across the beach, Jihoon’s shoulders hunched and his joints tense. 

Woojin’s mother is no goddess—he never knew his mother. But he thinks he can understand this, having a parent that wanted more from you than you could ever give. One day, they would be different, he thinks to himself—when the time came for Jihoon to fill his destiny, all Woojin knew how to do was stand by his side. But they’re still young, still unsure, and they can be equals for now.

Watching them, Woojin smiles. No amount of godly parents or great destinies could keep them apart, he thinks. Jihoon is his first friend, his _best_ friend, and he wants it to stay that way.

 

The leaves turn brown and fall off the trees, and then grow back again. One year rolls into the next without much fanfare; the sun rises from the east and sets in the west every night as per usual. Days go by and lead into nights, nights go by and lead into days; things are normal, routine, just as the gods wanted them.

Looking back, it’s hard to say when something shifted, when the glow that surrounds Jihoon began to spread to Woojin, too. They get a little bit older, a little bit closer to manhood—Jihoon loses some of his face’s roundness, Woojin’s jaw becomes sharper. Their friendship becomes something less innocent, less childishly simple; when they interact, they range from talking without a care in the world to silent awkwardness; from constantly touching to blushing at the slightest brush, fingers knocking against each other until one of them takes the other’s hand.

They don’t put a name to it, this thing that they have. Woojin thinks putting a name to it would make it something tangible, something capable of breaking. Even the might of the gods cannot destroy something that never existed in the first place. It doesn’t exist in words—merely in smiles with a little too much meaning attached to them, in lingering gazes when nobody is watching. 

Some things are still the same; most things, in fact. They’re still best friends; they still spar on the beach and make jokes that are only funny to the two of them and sit on the rocks talking about everything and nothing at the same time. All that changes is that sometimes they’ll fall onto each other after one of them overpowers the other, a tangle of awkward teenage limbs that they haven’t yet figured out how to use, and Woojin’s mind will wander to wondering what it would be like to kiss Jihoon. 

 

They’re fifteen when the war starts.

It’s a spring day like any other, except when they wake up they’re summoned to the throne room. The birds sing in the trees, and the flowers are just beginning to bloom, and Greece is going to war with Troy.

“Prince Daniel of Sparta has requested that the armies of all the Greek cities join together to destroy Troy,” the royal announcer, a small man with beady eyes and a long grey beard, reads from a scroll. “His sister, Princess Sejeong of Sparta, had married one Hwang Minhyun, before her husband was kidnapped for an unknown reason by an ambassador from the city of Troy.”

“It’s a great dishonour,” Jihoon whispers in awe. “I’ve heard of women getting kidnapped and there was never a war, but everything is always worse when a man is in trouble.” Woojin knows that all too well—he’d committed the worst crime a nine-year-old could, after all. Stealing from a man’s crops, kidnapping his daughter—that was one thing. But killing his son? That was something unforgivable, a crime only a madman would commit. 

Those days in Opus felt so far away now—like a life lived by a different person. Were it not for the scar on his arm that never fully healed, Woojin could have made himself believe that it had never happened.

“The nymph Thetis came from the sea today,” Jihoon’s father says. The few times he mentions Jihoon’s mother’s name, it’s with a strange tone, some combination of mourning and pride. “She said that it was the gods’s will for her son, Jihoon, to fight in this war—to fulfill his destiny and prove himself defending Greece on the battlefield. I told her he was only a boy, but she insisted—even if he was the only person his age in the army, it was only he who could turn the tides.” He sighs, and Woojin sees that this is hard for the king himself. “Jihoon, you will set sail with the troops from our nation in three days, joining the fleet commandeered by the men of Sparta.”

“No,” Woojin says. As Jihoon’s most trusted squire, he was expected to attend major announcements of state alongside Jihoon, but he had never spoken in one of them before.

The king raises an eyebrow. “What is your objection, Woojin?”

Woojin’s throat feels dry. All of a sudden, he loses the words, loses the motivation for him to speak up. All he had known was that he couldn’t let Jihoon go to Troy alone, that he had to say something before he lost him. He glances in his peripheral to Jihoon, staring at the ground with his shoulders oddly tense, and realizes that the other boy is terrified—an emotion Woojin had never known Jihoon to have. 

_Woojin,_ he thinks to himself. _To help, to protect._ _This,_ he thinks, is his destiny—the thing his name has been preparing him for, ever since his youth.

“I—my lord, when I arrived in Thessaly, the oracle said that I would be an important player in a great war. I suspect that she was talking about this one—with Troy.” The king nods in understanding. Woojin lowers his head and continues, “I think it best that I accompany Jihoon along with the troops—so I can live out this prophecy as well.”

The king nods again. “I cannot go against the prophecies of the gods,” he says. Woojin glances to Jihoon again—he looks frightened still, his face slightly green, but he looks up and shoots Woojin a small smile. “Very well. Jihoon and Woojin will both join the army. May the gods be with you both.”

Woojin’s stomach turns over. Try as he might, he cannot interpret that as anything other than a goodbye statement, something that could become terrifyingly final. _At least I’ll be with Jihoon,_ he thinks. _At least we won’t be alone._

 

They set sail two days later, the wind blowing the sails of the ship across the current. 

Woojin barely listens to what the leader of the troops has to say, only watches as he rallies the soldiers behind the _son of Thetis_. Jihoon’s eyes are alight at the praise, fear masked behind pride, but somewhere between all these soldiers Jihoon had lost his soft golden glow. 

Woojin thinks that becoming a man isn’t about his age or the sharpness of his jaw, but the way his mind stirred. Of course there’s no space for young boys with bright eyes and round cheeks in a war—but before Jihoon, before everything that Jihoon was, there had never been space for young boys with shy smiles and irregular teeth. He doesn’t know where he’ll be, what he’ll have, if Jihoon’s light goes out.

 _Hubris,_ he thinks. Jisung had warned them, back when they were boys, to be wary of their fatal flaws, to be careful not to fall for the traps of pride and arrogance. Jihoon is young, he thinks, barely even a man—he’s not suited to lead _anyone_ into battle.

But the commander keeps talking. “We will set sail for Troy now,” he says, “and join the troops commanded by our allies in Sparta upon arrival. Let us pray to the gods and hope that they will be by our side, and by the side of their own offspring.” He pats Jihoon on the back in the way a father would—not the kind of father who would nurture, though. The kind of father Woojin knows all too well—the kind of father Woojin’s own had been.

No matter where he goes, no matter how many years pass, Woojin constantly sees ghosts. Things come in cycles, after all; a man’s life is just a cycle of the same people and the same feelings and the same values. 

Once they’ve been rallied, and the ship sets to sail, the men disperse. They’re all older than Woojin—the youngest are seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, the oldest are in their fifties. It takes Woojin a couple of seconds to process that he can move, and he immediately follows Jihoon, grabbing his shoulder and stopping his past.

Jihoon whirls around. “ _What?_ ” he says, his hand already going for the sheathed sword. Woojin is all but ready to yell at him, to tell him that he needs to be more careful, that he can’t afford to become arrogant—not at this stage. But Jihoon’s face softens when he sees Woojin, and he says, “Oh, it’s just you,” with a smile on his face and Woojin can’t bring himself to say what he wanted to say. The warning stops in his throat—his mouth moves but he makes no sound. The words stay lodged there, in the cracks of his strength.

“Be careful,” he says finally. “You’re a great fighter, but—but you’re still mortal.” He can’t say everything he wants to say, but he can say that and hope it’s enough. 

Jihoon smiles. “Of course I’ll be careful,” he says, the words he speaks a direct opposite to the wildness that has spread into his eyes. “I can’t die and leave you all alone, can I?”

 

In the end, it’s a storm that throws Jihoon and Woojin apart for the first time since they were nine years old.

Woojin doesn’t know which of the gods had been angered, which of them had sent bad omens to their voyage; but none of that speculation matters when he sees the storm. It’s massive—the winds are uncontrollable and the rain torrential. The clouds spread through the sky for miles, each way Woojin looks. 

There had never been storms in Thessaly. He knows the rain because of the first nine years of his life in Opus, knows thunder and lightning as he knows his first ever memories, but Thessaly had escaped it for the most part. The most they ever got was light showers, rain enough to water the crops. Thessaly is a place of the sun, a place blessed by the gods, where their demigod prince shines too bright.

Their ship doesn’t survive it—Woojin barely does. Lightning catches onto the wood of the deck, and the flames spread faster than anything he’s ever seen before. He searches through the pandemonium for Jihoon—he’s only ever had eyes for Jihoon—but he can’t see him anywhere. The sky is dark with rain clouds, and there’s no room for golden light in a thunderstorm. 

The details are blurry, but he assumes that he washed away into the sea and ended up on an island somewhere in the sea. When he finally wakes up, he’s in an unfamiliar room and there’s a knife almost instantly thrust towards his throat.

He yelps. “Where am I?” he asks, hoping to sound strong but knowing that he sounds painfully youthful. “Who are you?”

His attacker moves away, and Woojin sees not a tall, broad, male captor but a young woman, about his age, dark haired with a glint in her eyes. “I should be asking the questions,” she says. “After all, I’m the one who’s armed.” Woojin swallows, watching her sheathe the knife. “Who are you and where do you come from, then?”

“Woojin,” he says. His throat feels parched, like he’s dehydrated, and his voice comes out a hoarse croak. He wonders how long ago the shipwreck was—how long he has laid here, in this bed in a room he doesn’t recognize. He wonders what had happened to— _oh, gods, what happened to Jihoon_? “Were there any others? Other people my age who washed up on your shore?”

“There were old men,” the girl says. “We killed them all on sight, though.” She smiles, but there’s no kindness to it. “Our queen said we should spare you because you looked young.” Woojin’s brain processes this slowly—Jihoon looks his age, even younger, and if Jihoon had ended up here then he would be alive. But Jihoon wasn’t here, which meant—“How old are you, boy?”

“Fifteen,” Woojin says. His brain, addled slightly by sleep and confusion, slowly works to put the pieces together. Women with weapons…a queen…killing men on sight… “You’re an Amazon, aren’t you?”

The girl nods, a proud smile playing across her lips. “I’m Doyeon,” she says. “I was instructed to watch over you until you woke up, and take you to our queen. She wants to know why you’re here.” She glances him up and down. “Can you walk?”

“Don’t know,” Woojin says. He stands up, wobbling slightly but otherwise finding his balance, and wonders not for the first time how long he had been unconscious. “Do—do you have any water?”

Doyeon passes him a bowl. “You were unconscious for over a week,” she says. “We were beginning to wonder if we should just put you out of your misery. Don’t worry, I was in favour of keeping you alive.” She grins. “No fun in killing you if you’re not conscious of it.”

Woojin pales, but he follows her out of the room, down a flight of stairs and into an eerily empty street. “Where is everyone?” he asks.

“You woke up at a good time,” Doyeon says. “There’s been a meeting called of our tribe. I only got out of it because I had a job assigned to me by the queen herself. But it means that _all of us_ will be able to hear your story and decide what to do with you.” 

Woojin imagines dozens of warrior women with unhinged grins like Doyeon’s, pointing spears and knives at him. “Uh, how many of you are there?” he asks. 

“Not sure,” Doyeon says. “Almost two hundred?” She grins. “Don’t worry. Some of us are friendly at least.”

 

Woojin doesn’t know how long he stays among the Amazons—years, maybe. Seasons don’t pass here the same way they did back on Thessaly—the summers are hotter, and the winters less cold. It rarely rains; the sun beats down on them, hot and harsh, during the summer days.

He supposes he’s a slave of some sorts; it’s not something he’s accustomed to, but he starts to survive in the role. Where Jihoon was a flower, beautiful and nurtured to grow to its full height, Woojin thinks he might be a weed—easy to ignore but surprisingly durable. For some reason, the Amazons take pity on him—their queen, Nayoung, was recently ascended to the throne after the death of her predecessor, Hippolyta, and she had listened to his story carefully.

“You aren’t the only one, then?” she had said, stroking the head of the leopard that sat at her feet. (He had been informed by Doyeon upon walking in that the leopard would bite anyone who lied. He wasn’t sure if it was true, but he wasn’t going to risk it either.)

“No,” he had told her, bowing his head. “There are others, but I suspect they were all scattered by the storm just as I was.”

Nayoung had nodded. “We Amazons are Greeks too,” she had told him. “If the troops get brought together again, our warriors will gladly enter battle for the honor of our people.” 

In his time, Woojin vaguely gets to know the Amazons. Doyeon was right—there’s almost two hundred of them, none of them much older or younger than Woojin. The oldest of the active warriors, Hayi, is twenty-six; the youngest, Wonyoung, is ten. If Woojin had thought Jihoon was too young, that was before he became accustomed to the culture of the Amazons; they were warlike, all working towards the singular goal of becoming warriors, and the fire in their eyes terrifies him.

Woojin keeps his distance as best as he could, earning his keep by doing work that the Amazons don’t see as fitting of them. It’s good work, honest earnings, and it helps to keep his mind away from the memory of Jihoon’s smile and Jihoon’s voice and _Jihoon_. He’s holding onto a vague hope, some desperate desire for Jihoon to have survived the shipwreck—he can’t imagine a world without Jihoon in it, making it that much lighter with his golden glow.

The leaves brown slightly, though never as much as they did in Thessaly. The breezes get fresher, but the sun stays bright in the sky. Hot summer days roll into slightly less hot autumn days. Life comes in cycles, a year comes in seasons, except when it doesn’t.

He doesn’t know how many years have passed when a ship docks on the island; in truth, he only knows that there’s a ship because it causes pandemonium. The girls are quick to react—their reflexes are superhuman, and Woojin has begun to wonder if it’s true that they are all descendants of Ares—and before he knows it he’s watching a battle on the shore.

He recognizes their armour instantly. _Greeks_. His heart leaps. Was Jihoon among them—had Jihoon survived the storm?

 _Of course he had,_ his mind says. _Jihoon has a destiny to fulfill. Until he fulfills that, you know he won’t die._

But it had been so long—perhaps Jihoon had forgotten him, perhaps the war had already finished; perhaps Woojin was the only one who had thought of the other every day that they’d been apart.

“Stop this,” Nayoung says, loud enough for Woojin to hear from the sidelines. The fighting stops. Woojin watches as Doyeon shoves a Greek soldier out of her way, as a different soldier stumbles away from Kaeun in obvious relief. “Who are you all? What do you want?”

The lines of soldiers part and a tall, broad-shouldered man passes between them, removing his helmet. “I am Daniel of Sparta,” he says. “I come with my army of Greeks searching for any Greek man who has not yet enlisted.” He smiles winningly at Nayoung—Woojin knows smiles like that, smiles that are charming and yet saber-toothed, hiding a venemous bite. 

Nayoung remains unfazed. “We are Amazons,” she says. “There are no men among our tribe, _Daniel of Sparta_. Surely you must know that.”

Another soldier steps out from the ranks. He leaves his helmet on, but he carries himself with obvious confidence and ease. “We would gladly accept you onto our ranks, too, if you wished to fight for Greece.” He glances around, as if looking for something—there’s an erratic kind of energy in him, like a taut bowstring. “The Oracle of Delphi told me that a dear friend of mine would be found here.”

“Oh, you mean Woojin?” Jurina says. “The boy who washed up here six years ago?”

 _Six years_? Had it really been six years that Woojin had been on this island—had it really been six years that Woojin had been parted from Jihoon. He almost can’t believe it—but, then again, he wouldn’t believe anything about the passage of time in this island. The winters feel like springs and the springs feel like summers; six years have gone by feeling both impossibly longer and inherently shorter. 

“Woojin?” the soldier in the helmet says. “Woojin is here?”

Nayoung turns to Jurina. “Find Woojin,” she says. “Tell him that the Greeks have reconvened and that they’re looking for him.” Jurina turns and moves towards the village—Woojin watches as she adds to Daniel, “The Amazons are Greeks above all. My warriors would be proud to fight alongside your men, if you would willingly take us.”

Jurina smiles at Woojin when she spots him. Her smile lacks a lot of the sharpness that many of the Amazons have almost ingrained—there’s just a strange kind of age lined on her face, making her seem wiser beyond her years despite being only two years older than Woojin. “The Greeks have arrived,” she says.

He follows her onto the shore, not knowing what to say or how to introduce himself. How were you supposed to reintroduce yourself after six years? With his name—though he had no family name to fall back on, no kingdom with which to identify himself—or with a casual kind of confidence, as if he had never been gone?

As it turns out, he doesn’t need it. The soldier in the helmet takes one look at him and rushes for him, wrapping his arms around him, and _oh_. This is Jihoon—Woojin knows it like he knows his own name. His voice is deeper, his shoulders broader, his muscles stronger, but it’s undeniably Jihoon—real, tangible, in the flesh. “Woojin,” he says softly. “Woojin, is it really you?”

“It is,” Woojin whispers. “It really is.”

 

They set sail again not long after that, and Jihoon fills Woojin in—they were all scattered by the storm, and Daniel had rebuilt the army along with his half-brother, Jinyoung. They were heading for Troy to make an attempt at siege—Minhyun of Sparta had not yet returned.

“There’s been whispers,” Jihoon tells him, voice hushed, “that Minhyun wasn’t abducted—that he and Seongwoo of Troy were _lovers_.” He’d given Woojin space in his own cabin, inciting grumbles among his crew—Woojin is glad for it, though. Jihoon doesn’t glow as much as he did when they were children, but some things don’t change.

He’s beautiful. Adulthood had shaped his face; he’d grown into his soft features and awkward limbs. He _looked_ like a champion, looked like there was the blood of the gods and the destiny of a hero running through his veins. He radiates strength, but he also radiates the same goldenness, the same unforgettable aura. After all, Woojin had learned from his time in the camp of the Amazons that the sun could be a thing of beauty and light, but it could also be harsh, unforgiving, a symbol of the gods’s wrath. 

Jihoon turns his arm over, traces the old scar from that day all those years ago when a sparring match had turned fatal and Woojin’s entire life changed. “It really is you,” he says in a hushed voice—almost reverential, as if he couldn’t quite believe it. Woojin had never heard this tone from Jihoon, not even when they’d visited temples to give prayers to the gods. “You’re alive—you’re here, Woojin.”

“I am,” he says. “I’m here.”

“I thought you were dead,” Jihoon says. “I resigned myself to thinking you were dead—I was so afraid, Woojin.” His fingers trace upwards, along Woojin’s upper arm towards his shoulder. “You’re so thin.”

“I was a slave for the Amazons,” Woojin says. “I haven’t eaten a lot lately.”

Jihoon hums. His fingers move along his shoulder to the spot where his neck meets his shoulder, as if trying to map out Woojin’s body, proving that he’s tangible. “I can’t believe you’re real,” he says. “I can’t believe I’m not dreaming.”

Woojin moves his hand up to take Jihoon’s in his own, feeling the warmth of his fingers. Jihoon had always radiated warmth, like a fireplace; both literally in his body temperature and in what he meant to Woojin. “I’m real,” he says. “I’m really alive, Jihoon.”

Jihoon stares at him, gazes him in the eye. His grip on Woojin’s hand gets stronger, squeezing it for something that Woojin thinks is fear. “You’ll fight beside me?” he says, and Woojin hears the nervousness—they’re still so young, only twenty-one, and Jihoon is leading his armies into battle. They’d both been so young when the Fates had written out their destiny, had intricately weaved their paths together. 

“Always,” Woojin says. “I always will.”

 

“Are you awake?” Jihoon asks in the dead of night, his soft sleep-addled voice piercing the night’s silence.

“I never slept,” Woojin says. “It’s hard for me to sleep now. I can never let my guard down long enough.”

Jihoon sighs. For a second, Woojin thinks he’s going to say something, but he stays silent, his heavy half-asleep breathing filling up the spaces of the room and the gaps in Woojin’s heart. 

“My left heel,” he says finally. Woojin doesn’t understand, and is about to voice this when Jihoon continues. “When my mother dipped me in the River Styx, a part of me was never submerged. She held me from my left heel, and that was the only part of my body that never became invincible.”

“Your weak spot,” Woojin says. “The only place you can be harmed.” He stares at the deck above him, at the moisture that sticks on the ceiling of the cabin and threatens to drip onto him. “Why are you telling me this?”

Jihoon is silent, and for a second Woojin thinks he may have fallen asleep, or that the question was not one he wanted to answer. “Because I trust you,” he answers finally. “More than I’ve ever trusted anyone.”

 

The way to Troy is long—it’s far from Greece, and they still have more armies to assemble, more errands to run. 

But Jihoon is here. _Jihoon is here._ He paces up and down the cabin, _their_ cabin, running his fingers through his hair in stress, and all Woojin can think is that he’s beautiful. 

He’s loved Jihoon as long as he can remember; loved him as his greatest companion, as his best friend. But he doesn’t remember when he fell _in love_ with Jihoon. It’s _wrong_ for him to be thinking it—Jihoon is a hero, a warrior, a demigod, not someone to befall such mortal folly—but it’s unbearable now. When they were younger, when these feelings had first appeared, they were something close to innocence, friendship that meant just a little bit more. But now Jihoon was here, handsome and strong and _Jihoon_ , and Woojin can almost not stand it, being so close to him and yet feeling so far. 

Things come in cycles, after all—even feelings that you almost forgot about, that you convinced yourself, looking back into your memories, that were platonic. Jihoon is back, real and tangible and glowing like the sun, and so are all the feelings that Woojin feels for him. He knocks the air out of Woojin’s lungs, stifles his breathing the way the scorching sun on a summer’s day beats down on his throat.

In the end, it’s Jihoon who addresses it, the elephant in the room that grows too big to ignore. He addresses it by barging into the cabin, cupping Woojin’s cheek in his hand, and kissing him hard on the mouth.

Neither of them know what they’re doing—Woojin’s never been kissed before, and he suspects it’s the same for Jihoon because he fumbles, unsure of where to put his hand and how to properly fit his lips against Woojin’s. Woojin leans forward, his hands finding their way into Jihoon’s hair, and Jihoon makes a noise from inside his throat that will probably replay in Woojin’s mind night after night from now on.

Woojin pulls away, taking Jihoon in breathlessly. “Are you in your right mind?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Jihoon says. His pupils are dilated, eyes dark, his breaths heavy.

“Do you love me like this?”

“I don’t know,” Jihoon repeats. He presses against Woojin a little bit more insistently, letting out something akin to a whine. 

“Do you want this?” Woojin asks. His other hand, the one not in Jihoon’s hair, moves to his cheek, tilting his chin towards him. This—this kind of soft touch, something that had been forbidden for so long—Woojin thinks he could get drunk on the feeling of Jihoon’s skin below him, on the quiet noises he makes when kissed.

“Yes,” Jihoon says. “More than anything.”

There’ll be time to talk later, Woojin thinks. For now, he closes the gap between them again, lets Jihoon steal the air from his lungs and the heart from his chest.

* * *

“I love you.”

“How? How do you love me? As a friend, as a partner—as a lover?”

_How do I love you?_

_(I love you like I love the sun, the moon, the stars; I love you as I love the elements that make up the earth; I love you the way I love the air in my lungs and the blood in my veins. I love you more than I have ever loved myself, more than I have ever loved anyone else—I love you as everything all at once, in both a fiery passion and a dull knowledge; as both a necessity and a privilege.)_

“Don’t ask stupid questions like that, Woojinie. You know I can’t answer them.”

* * *

The first fight the Greeks have on Trojan soil comes not between the Greeks and the Trojans, but the inevitable infighting. They dock their ship in a Trojan harbour and set up camp outside the city walls, ready to begin their siege.

It’s between Jihoon and Jinyoung—the younger prince of Sparta, Daniel’s brother with a lot to say and a platform to say it on. “We fight under the Spartan banner,” Jinyoung says, “because we’re recovering a Spartan hostage. You have no right to interfere in our battle plans—you and all your people are just _supporters_.”

Jihoon glares at him. “I am the son of Thetis,” he says, “and the gods have stated that _I_ will be the great hero of this war. Not you and not your brother, either.”

“You?” Jinyoung says. “You, a hero? Do not make me laugh, _Prince_ Jihoon. You are barely even a warrior—your skills come from your godly heritage and being dipped in the River Styx.” Jihoon turns away, ignoring the taunts, though Woojin sees the way his fingers curl into a fist around the helm of his sword. “You bring with you a half-full legion that managed to get scattered by the winds, and a—” His eyes fix on Woojin for a second, and Woojin feels like his skin is being peeled away, like his heart is being put on display for all the other men to laugh at. “A _paramour_?”

Snickers spread through the spectating soldiers. Woojin had known that people would question what he was to Jihoon, would try to interpret the way they loved each other—he hardly felt it was the worst thing Jihoon had ever been told, or even the worst thing that Jinyoung had said.

But Jihoon moves with reflexes that should be impossible for any mortal, unsheathing his sword and holding the point of it to Jinyoung’s neck. “Don’t—talk—about—him,” he says, his voice dangerously low, the tip of his sword barely grazing the skin of Jinyoung’s throat. “Keep his name out of your mouth.”

Jinyoung steps back. There’s something wild in Jihoon’s eyes, something unhinged. He doesn’t glow—he absorbs the light, turning it into a void of dullness and darkness and danger. “Keep your sword to yourself, Jihoon.”

“This is the man you all rally behind?” Jihoon says. He turns to the crowd. “ _This_ is your second-in-command, this _boy_ who thinks he can run his mouth without consequence?” He drops his sword—it skids across the sand. “I will not fight for an army that disrespects me. I refuse to fight for Greece. You can try winning this war without the one prophesized to lead you.”

He storms towards the makeshift campsite, to the tent he had tirelessly attempted to put up himself, and disappears beneath the cloth. Woojin watches him go, knowing what it was—knowing that this wrath would appear and disappear as the changing of the seasons, knowing that he could do nothing to help it.

 

“Hubris,” Woojin says. “Deadly pride.” He sits down on the sand inside Jihoon’s tent, cross-legged and gazing at him softly. (He wants to be more forceful—he wants Jihoon to argue with him, to realize he’s right. But when it comes to Jihoon all rational thought flies out of the window—it always has, even when they were kids and missed their meals because Jihoon insisted on another round of sparring or on sitting on the rocks and watching the sunset.)

“I’m not prideful,” Jihoon says. “I’m defending my own self-respect. After what that _Jinyoung_ said to me? I would be a laughing stock if I continued to stand behind him.”

Woojin sighs. “Our men refuse to fight without you,” he says. “They believe in your blessings and your prophecies—they’ll not walk into battle unless you stand at their head.”

“Good,” Jihoon says. He won’t look Woojin in the eye. “Let them lose some battles, let them make mistakes and ruin their whole damn campaign—it serves them right for disrespecting me.”

“But it wasn’t you that you were defending,” Woojin says. “Was it? It was me—you flew into a rage as soon as Jinyoung mentioned me.” He kneels forward, tilts Jihoon’s chin so he can look him in the eyes and try to figure out what emotions pass through their irises. “I can look after my own honour, Jihoonie.”

Jihoon swallows. “I love you,” he says finally. “I won’t let them bring you down with me.” He sighs. “Heroes—especially the children of the gods—they’re always flawed. They’re arrogant, or prideful, or filled with untamable wrath. But the people around them don’t have to deal with that—they don’t have to be a part of their volatile nature, their flaws being amplified just as their strengths are.” He looks away, towards his lap. “I don’t want you to be remembered as just the extension of me.”

Woojin barks out a laugh. “I’m not here because I have to be,” he says. “I’m here because I want to be. I chose this, remember? We were in your father’s throne room and he was ready to send you away alone amongst the soldiers—”

“—and you said you wouldn’t let me go alone,” Jihoon says. He smiles uneasily—it doesn’t reach his eyes, but then again, most of his smiles didn’t anymore. Woojin has started to miss his glow—it’s still there, but it’s hidden away by grime and wrath and lack of sleep. 

“I said I’d always fight beside you, remember?” Woojin says. “I’ll hold up to my promises.”

Jihoon leans forward to kiss Woojin, and it’s only then that Woojin notices the tear tracks marking Jihoon’s cheeks. His arm instinctively snakes around his back, his free hand cupping his cheek. _I’ll be here for you,_ he thinks, and hopes that Jihoon gets the message. Determination on one end, protection on the other; both needing each other, both desperate for one another. 

They break apart, foreheads rested on each other, silently basking in each other’s company. 

“I can’t fight,” Jihoon murmurs. “I gave my ultimatum—it would look bad for me to turn back on that, now. But the prophecy said I would be a great hero—the tide will turn, Woojin, I’ll return to the fray at some point.”

“We can’t begin the siege without our army,” Woojin says. “If you don’t want to fight, Jihoon, I will. I know your methods, I know your stance—” _I know_ you, he thinks, _more than anyone else does, more than anyone else ever will._ “I’ll take your armour and act as you, and perhaps our army will budge.”

Jihoon stares at the ground. “I don’t like it,” he says. “I don’t want you to be in danger if I’m not there—to know about it, to help what best I can, to—”

“I trained alongside you, remember?” Woojin says. “I’m a fighter—and, anyway, I was destined to be important in this war as well. They said that my involvement would turn the tides of the war—the oracle said I would be a defining factor. Perhaps leading our troops into the siege is it.” 

He smiles, but his head is running a thousand miles per hour, trying to imagine how It would feel to wear Jihoon’s armour and not be Jihoon, how it would fall apart if he tried to be Jihoon without Jihoon’s glow. This was a sort of homecoming, wasn’t it? A final metamorphosis into one being, a recognition of the way Jihoon was a part of Woojin, the way they knew each other like the backs of their own hands?

“Don’t worry, Jihoon,” he says finally. “I’ll be alright.”

* * *

Daniel’s voice is commanding, crisp, detached and yet perfectly caring. “We’ll remember him as one who gave his life for Greece,” he says, his tone level, betraying no kind of emotion. “He lived a squire, an ordinary man; he died a martyr, and he will be remembered as a prince.”

“Who did?”

The group soldiers part—Jihoon stares at the funeral pyre, his heart in his throat, blood rushing to his skull. “Who died a martyr, Daniel?”

Daniel lowers his head. “Woojin,” he says, the word barely a whisper, the fear of Jihoon’s reaction hardly contained.

Jihoon shakes his head. “No,” he says. “No, he’s not. You’re trying to get me back onto the battlefield, aren’t you? You’re trying to make me relent.”

The men glance to each other. Jihoon is young—they’re all older, they’ve all experienced the loss of a friend, but none of them recognized the crack in his voice and the desperation in his eyes, the dutiful rejection of what his eyes saw and what his ears heard. 

“Woojin isn’t dead,” Jihoon says. He repeats it again, and then again, and then a fourth time, his voice quieter each time—as if saying it over and over again would make it any more true. He bites his lip to keep the tears inside his eye sockets—Woojin bit his lip, all the time when he was nervous; Jihoon didn’t know when he’d picked it up, if he’d ever stopped. 

Woojin was in Jihoon’s veins, in his quirks and his habits and in everything he found beautiful. His heart thuds in his throat.

“Woojin,” he says quietly, a hoarse whisper, not enough for anyone to hear. “Woojin—Woojin.” He thuds to the ground, kneeling on the sand, tries to scream Woojin’s name but the sound just won’t come out of his throat. That final bit of recognition, that final piece of acceptance—it lodges in his throat, refusing to leave.

* * *

The opening to Hades is a dark and gloomy place; there’s thick moisture in the air and a chill to the surroundings. Everything has a kind of sordid pallor, a place that only the dead would ever subject themselves to.

His memories take a while to come back to him when he comes to—he blinks twice and watches as the Underworld materializes around him, filling his surroundings with endless darkness on any side. He can’t remember who he is; his own name lies at the tip of his tongue, a shelf just out of reach.

All he can remember is the name— _Jihoon_. For a second, he thinks it’s his own name, but all of that fades away as a face begins to appear in his mind, and a rush of memories—sensations and experiences and emotions. Jihoon isn’t him, but Jihoon is—was?—a person important to him; the _most_ important, if his name is all he can remember as he takes his first steps into Hades. 

The rest of it comes back to him slowly. Everything comes in cycles—life and death and the roles you play. He was a prince who became a squire, a squire who became a slave, a slave who became a soldier and a soldier who became a martyr. A martyr who became a prince. Life comes in cycles but it also happens in days, each one slightly different to the last, a rush of feelings and conversations and heartbeats that can never be replicated.

His name is Woojin. He died when a Trojan prince speared him in the chest. He was—is a hero. 

He loved Jihoon. He loves Jihoon. Even death couldn’t stop him from loving Jihoon like it’s all he’s ever known how to do, like it’s the religion he desperately clings to and the blood that circles through his organs. He thinks he might have learned to love Jihoon before he learned to breathe—he thinks loving Jihoon was the more important lesson of the two, as well.

“Will you cross the River Styx?” the ferryman asks him, his skin sickly pale. 

“No,” Woojin says. “I’m waiting for someone else to come across to the Underworld.”

The ferryman shrugs and turns to another soul, and Woojin turns over the drachma that he was buried with in his hand, wondering what would be in store for him if he merely passed over now.

From Hades, he watches life unfurl in the world above him, in the mortal world on the land of the battlefield. He watches as Jihoon rejoins the battle, holds his breath through the hours of grief and loneliness that Jihoon has to go through, aches at the constant reminder that that was, however you looked at it, his fault. 

He watches Jihoon avenge him, looks away from the bloodied portrait of his unhinged wrath as he spears Sungwoon, the prince that had killed him. It hurts too much to see—it’s a cruel reminder of everything Jihoon was and hated to be. The gods had shaped him that way—it was the nature of heroes to be flawed, to find themselves in situations that only solidified the folly of mortals and the devotion to the gods.

But he also watches Jihoon repent, how he watches the body of Sungwoon fall and the way the Trojans mourn him. He watches as Jihoon proposes several days of truce so that they could properly mourn Sungwoon, so that they could partake in their funeral rites. His heart swells—this was what the gods didn’t see when they picked their heroes and sired their demigods; the way that mortals could love each other, the way life’s futility and the inevitability of death made everything all the more precious.

And he watches as Seongwoo of Troy pulls the bowstring and fires the arrow that lodges into Jihoon’s heel. Watches as Jihoon’s body falls to the ground, unsure whether he was heartbroken at his death or glad that he would no longer be alone here in Hades, that he could finally take a step towards Charon the ferryman and move into the afterlife.

His spirit appears later—it could have been minutes, hours, days. Time is strange in the Underworld—there’s none of the cycles Woojin is used to, none of the simple facts of the mortal world. On earth, it keeps you grounded; the knowledge that no matter what happens, the sun will rise from the east and the clock will keep on ticking. In Hades, there are no such rules, no such restrictions.

He’s dazed but definitely Jihoon—death had not affected his face. If anything, it made it all the more tangible. Even in death, he glows like the sun; he looks younger than he had for many years, more carefree than he had looked for even longer. 

“I don’t know who I am,” he says.

“That’s natural,” Woojin says. “The memories should come back to you—slowly but surely.” Hope trickles into his heart. “Do you remember anything?”

“A name,” Jihoon says. “Woojin. I think—whoever he was, he was very important to me.” He looks at Woojin as if it’s his first time seeing him, drinks in the sight of him. “That’s you, isn’t it? I don’t remember what Woojin looked like or what he was to me, but I see you and I feel—I feel like I know you. I feel like fate tied us together.”

Woojin smiles and stretches out his hand, an open invitation for Jihoon to take it. He does—taking both his fingers in his own and the heart that lay in it, an invitation not only to be ferried across the river that had once made him invulnerable, but to hold on for the rest of forever. 

They stand there for a moment, on the banks of the River Styx, hands clasped. The world seems to stop for them; just for a moment.

Then they take their first step towards the river, towards the ferryman that would take them across and towards the afterlife that awaits on the other side. Their first step towards eternity.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! a comment if you enjoyed it would be much appreciated; i can also be found on [twitter](https://twitter.com/reveIorbit) and [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/970524_com). i hope you enjoyed!!!!!


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